‘President’ Bernie Sanders’ New Global Warming/Climate Change Law More Important Than Sex?

If “President Bernie Sanders” ever happens, he has made it pretty clear which issues are at the the top of his agenda. In this case, Sanders’ new global warming/climate change law was introduced on the U.S. Senate floor less than a month ago, and he has been pushing this agenda for quite a while.

In the meantime, Donald Trump has been attacking Bill Clinton’s sex life in hopes of bringing down Hillary’s polls. Bernie thinks this issue is unimportant, and recently he’s been chastising Trump for focusing on sex instead of global issues like climate change.

Bernie Sander’s new bill is called the Climate Protection and Justice Act. Sanders claims it would help reduce global warming by cutting total U.S. CO2 emissions by 40 percent by 2030, and 80 percent by the year 2050. In addition, the law would set up a “carbon pollution fee” that grows over time. The money taken from industry would be redistributed to lower income families, with an estimated $1,900 being given to families making less than $100,000 in 2030. There are many parts to the legislation, but another major factor is the creation of a Climate Justice Resiliency Council, “which will distribute $20 billion a year in block grants to areas disproportionately affected by climate change.”

When the Vermont senator introduced the climate change bill on December 10, 2015, he claimed a quick response by Congress is important.

“What the scientists tell us is that we have a relatively short window of opportunity to bring about the fundamental changes that we need in our global energy system to transform our energy system,” Sanders said at the time. “It is absolutely vital that we do what many economists tell us we must and that is put a price on carbon. It is the simplest and most direct way to make the kind of cuts in carbon pollution that we have got to make if we are going to successfully transition away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy.”

(Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Not everyone believes that Congress must act quickly, or at all. In the past, Donald Trump’s global warming stance was that he is not a “believer.” Three years ago, Trump also claimed that “the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”

Although the quote was old, Sanders recently dredged it up in order to make a point during a recent rally.

“How brilliant can you be. The entire scientific community has concluded that climate change is real and causing major problems and Trump believes that it’s a hoax created by the Chinese. Surprised it wasn’t the Mexicans,” he said, according to the Washington Post.

In response, Trump has called Sanders a “wacko,” but in general the real estate mogul has been focusing his attention on beating down Hillary Clinton’s polls even further since Bernie is not the number one threat at this time. The Clinton campaign has responded by bringing out Bill Clinton, so Trump has been attacking Bill’s sex life and the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

According to ABC, Sanders believes that arguing over sex lives is a waste of time in comparison to global warming and climate change.

“We have enormous problems facing this country and I think we got more things to worry about than Bill Clinton’s sexual life,” Sanders said. “Maybe Donald Trump might want to focus attention on climate change, understand that climate change is not a hoax, as he believes that it is.”

[image via Shutterstock]To put Sanders’ beliefs in perspective, he thinks that climate change laws are such a high priority because he believes global warming is “directly related” to terrorism and the rise of such groups as ISIS.

“In fact, climate change is directly related to the growth of terrorism,” Sanders said during the November 14 Democratic debate. “And if we do not get our act together and listen to what the scientists say you’re gonna see countries all over the world — this is what the CIA says, they’re gonna be struggling over limited amounts of water, limited amounts of land to grow their crops. And you’re gonna see all kinds of international conflict.”

While many might agree that talking about Bill and Monica in this day and age is a time waster, Bernie may be exaggerating the danger of global warming just a little. FactCheck.org noted that one “study concluded that man-made climate change likely worsened a drought in Syria and contributed to instability there,” which is where Sanders came by the idea. But they concluded that “the evidence so far does not support Sanders’ claim” since “increasing the probability of a possible factor in a conflict isn’t the same as being a ‘directly related’ cause for terrorism.”

In any case, it is a fair prediction to claim if the senator becomes President Bernie Sanders, then pushing the climate change agenda will be a high priority. In this case, Bernie may have the majority of Americans supporting him, since a new Monmouth University Poll claims that “60 percent believe it’s a ‘very’ or ‘somewhat’ serious problem and another 64 percent say they’re in favor of government action to reduce the activities that lead to climate change and sea level rise.”